User Guide
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•Citizen Insights
User Guide
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•Learn more about Citizen Insights, a tool that helps governments to maintain an open line of communication with their citizens while holding themselves accountable to reach desired operational targets. Citizen Insights (CI) offers citizens up-to-date visibility into public-facing services such as road service status for snowplows, salt spreaders, waste management, and street sweepers. State, provincial, and local governments can use CI to make this information available to the public.
Citizen Insights (CI) offers citizens up-to-date visibility into public-facing services such as road service status for snow plows, salt spreaders, waste management, and street sweepers. State, Provincial, and local governments can use Citizen Insights to make this information available to the public, allowing them to better plan their travel by identifying and avoiding certain areas which have not yet been serviced. Citizen Insights helps governments to maintain an open line of communication with their citizens while holding themselves accountable to reach desired operational targets.
To properly set up your map, please note that any changes you make in the Citizen Insights Admin will be automatically saved, as long as you do not navigate to other pages in MyGeotab. To permanently save the changes, follow the complete process. All changes will be saved when you finish the Save and Publish process.
All vehicles displayed on the public-facing map need to be assigned to the appropriate service level group (branching from the root Public Works group) in MyGeotab. Correct asset assignment is important for displaying various service group activities, including roadway snow removal, sidewalk snow removal, waste collection, etc. It will also be important if the agency decides to limit vehicles on the public-facing map.
The Citizen Insights Administrator must have their data access scope set to include the Public Works vehicles displayed on the public-facing map. An incorrect data scope setup in MyGeotab will prevent the Administrator from setting up the Citizen Insights service group vehicles, as described below.
Besides the correct data access, the Citizen Insights Add-In Administrator requires the correct security clearance setting. The user administering Citizen Insights may be assigned one of the standard MyGeotab clearances or a custom clearance, as long as all the following clearance features are enabled:
✱ NOTE: The Change system settings clearance provides access to MyGeotab’s system settings. This security clearance feature is only required for accessing the route completion shapefile upload tool. Should you choose not to give the Citizen Insights Administrator this feature, they will need to work with your agency’s MyGeotab Administrator to upload the routes.
To show the level of service for street or route segments, you need to load the street segment GIS/mapping data through the Route Completion module on MyGeotab to display Routes on the map.
Setting a Boundary Zone
The MyGeotab Administrator needs to create a boundary zone in MyGeotab that outlines the area for which you want to display service information to citizens on the public-facing map. To create a boundary zone:
Citizen Insights customers are responsible for selecting the information that is displayed publicly to citizens. The application can display vehicle locations, vehicle types, groups, names, and street segments if the customer decides to provide that information to the public.
A Citizen Insights system user (citizeninsightsbot) is added to the database so that the data can be fetched using this account and displayed on the public website. This user cannot be removed or else the public website will not work.
Citizen Insights is accessed by the customer’s Administrator in MyGeotab. The public-facing website can be managed from MyGeotab, and the Administrator can control what information is displayed to the public.
The public-facing map is where government entities inform citizens about service routes and current service level of roads, sidewalks, and other service groups. Before adjusting your Citizen Insights settings, ensure you have set up your vehicles, groups, zones and routes as required in MyGeotab.
You can choose your preferred method of delivering operational insights:
To adjust base map settings, follow the steps below:
On the Default Map View tab, enter an address within the region you want to determine as your default map view. Enter an address or latitude and longitude coordinates on the Find a location field to make it the default location citizens see when opening the map. You can also interact with the map by panning, zooming, rotating or changing the theme to determine the default map view for citizens.
Enter a zone on the Select a MyGeotab zone to set as a service boundary field to determine a geographic filter for the data. Asset data from outside the boundary does not appear to citizens. Select the checkbox if the boundary should be viewable by citizens. You can click Edit zone to open the Zones page.
Use the toggle to view the light or dark theme for the map on the public website.
When you are happy with the selected default map view, service boundary and theme, click Save and publish to apply your changes. To understand the publishing process, refer to the Publishing to the Map section.
On the Map Add-Ins menu, view and set up additional plug-ins on the public-facing website. Only Trafficland cameras are supported at this time.
Click the toggle to activate the plug-in after selecting a MyGeotab zone as a service boundary.
! IMPORTANT: Remember to click Save and publish to apply your changes. To understand the publishing process, refer to the Publishing to the Map section.
On the Delaytab, choose the desired time delay for the display of live actions for assets on the map. The default value is 15 minutes.
✱ NOTE: Adding a delay avoids informing the public about the current location of service vehicles.
On the Language tab, select additional languages to include on the public website. The available options are English, French and Spanish.
After selecting an additional language from the dropdown list, click the pencil icon next to the language name to enter translations for all website sections. To disable the language on the website, click the archive icon.
On the new language page, view the original language information and add translations to public website settings, service categories, and service groups.
! IMPORTANT: Remember to click Save and publish to apply your changes. To understand the publishing process, refer to the Publishing to the Map section.
Click Back after adjusting the settings on all tabs to return to the Citizen Insights Activity Manager page.
You can show either Routes or Trip Trails on your Citizen Insights website.
Routes are pre-set paths that fleets should be servicing. Only your fleet’s activity and road service status within these routes will be visible for citizens on the public-facing map. Select Show routes if desired and continue configuring the settings in the Configuring a Service Category section below.
! IMPORTANT: You need MyGeotab’s Route Completion upload and Exceptions engine to use Routes in Citizen Insights. Ensure that a single service rule exists in MyGeotab for each of your route completion service groups to use this feature correctly. For further instructions on setting up Route Completion in MyGeotab, please refer to the Route Completion User Guide.
Trip Trails show all places your fleet has passed, but does not show road service status. To display trip trails on the public-facing map, select Show trip trails, then choose a color for your trip trail. You can view your color selections against both the light and dark themes of the map. Citizens can view the map in either mode from the website once published.
✱ NOTE: If you select trip trails, continue to configure the vehicle service groups in the Active service categories, as described below. For this option, you do not need to configure time intervals.
Click Back to return to the Citizen Insights Activity Manager page.
To configure a service category when showing routes, follow the steps below:
! IMPORTANT: Vehicle names and routes that are not hidden will appear on the public-facing map. Do not display any confidential information.
✱ NOTE: Viewing the preview does not set the theme as the default for the public-facing map. This feature allows you to preview what the public-facing map will look like for the two options the users can see based on their background color theme.
✱NOTE: A maximum of the prior 30 days of data is currently available. Please be mindful of the limitation when creating your time intervals.
From the Service Categories section on the Citizen Insights Activity Manager page, you have quick access to actions such as editing, removing or activating and deactivating service categories.
Click the toggle or icons beside each service category name to perform the following actions:
![]() | Make the service category active on the public website. A blue toggle means it is active, while a gray toggle means it is inactive. |
![]() | Edit the service category. |
![]() | Remove the service category. |
To change the order of how the service categories are displayed, click the left edge of a service category and drag and drop on the order you want.
Once you have configured the base map settings, continue to configure the public website. The public website hosts the public-facing map where citizens can follow information such as road service status for snow plows, salt spreaders, waste management, and street sweepers.
To configure your public website:
✱ NOTE: This change will only be saved after you complete the next steps to publish the website.
✱ NOTE: The About page should not have legal verbiage or disclaimers. Reserve legal verbiage and disclaimer to the Terms and services page.
✱ NOTE: The Help page should not have legal verbiage or disclaimers. Reserve legal verbiage and disclaimer to the Terms and services page.
✱ NOTE: The ‘About’ & ‘Help’ page should not have legal verbiage or disclaimers. Reserve legal verbiage and disclaimer to the Terms and services page.
✱ NOTE: The legal content of the Terms and services page must be reviewed by Geotab legal.
✱ NOTE: The legal content of the Terms and services page must be reviewed by Geotab legal.
Any changes made to your CI settings take approximately 30 minutes to publish to the public facing website in either private or public mode.
✱ NOTE: When the website is first published, you will be asked where you would like the website’s cached data to reside. The system will automatically store the data on a server located in the selected country.
Follow the steps below to embed the Citizen Insights map within your own website:
✱ NOTE: You must enable and publish the public website to use this iframe.
You can choose to reset all map data to show all streets as ‘not serviced’ when the map becomes rapidly outdated due to weather conditions. For example, a road that was recently serviced can be covered in snow again due to a storm.
To reset all map data:
Integrating Social Media Feed
To integrate your social media content with the public website, click Social Media Settings from the Citizen Insights Activity Manager.
After adding your Twitter username, see a preview of the feed on the Twitter feed preview panel.